In the present Master's thesis, I start with a discussion of the position of the so-called non-fulfilment of blanket obligations (a dogmatically and logically more correct substitute for the established term »breach of obligatory conduct«) within the threefold general concep-tion of the criminal offence. The dilemma here is, paraphrased and specified, whether the institution in question falls within the statutory essence, that is to say, the essence of ne-gligent, omissive and endangerment offences, or within the sphere of their unlawfulness.
In what follows, I will show how the roots of the problem described here go back to the most basic issues of general substantive criminal law, such as the debate on the value-neutrality of the crime's essence, on the normative elements of the criminal offence and on various axiological conceptions of the causal link between the offending conduct and the forbidden consequence.
In this context, I also explore the points of contact between the various theories of cau-sation that are particularly relevant to my argument, such as the theory of tolerable risk, the theory of the irrelevance of hypothetical cavalidity, and the theory of the increase of risk. Furthermore, I show the point at which the aforementioned theoretical conceptions irreversibly diverge. I always view these insights through prism of dilemma of the appro-priate placement of the non-fulfilment of blanket obligations within the general concep-tion of the criminal offence.
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